Feel the Power of the IDF!

NIEUWEGEIN, Netherlands (Reuters) - A Malaysian airliner shot
down in eastern Ukraine was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile
launched from a village held by rebels fighting Ukrainian
government forces, international prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The findings challenge Moscow's suggestion that Malaysia Airlines
flight 17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014,
was brought down by the Ukrainian military. All 298 people on
board, most of them Dutch citizens, were killed.

There has been frequent spillover of fighting between the
factions in Syria into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, but,
according to Israeli media, this was the first time Iron Dome was
activated to intercept the errant fire.

The newly brokered cease-fire between the US and Russia
has paved the way for military cooperation in fighting terrorist
elements in Syria, seemingly closing the book on a window in time where
Russian and US jets were flying close enough to each other to risk a
potential clash between world powers.

But how does Russia's air force stack up against the US?
During Russia's stint in Syria, four of their latest and greatest Su-35 Flanker jets flew sorties just miles from the only operational fifth-generation fighter jet in the world, the US's F-22 Raptor.
Given the fundamental differences between these two top-tier fighter
jets, we take a look at the technical specifications and find out which
fighter would win in a head-to-head matchup.

Aleppo is one of Syria's largest cities and one of its most
divided. For years, control of the city has been split between
President Bashar Assad's forces and the rebels fighting his
authoritarian regime.

The fighting has set off a large-scale humanitarian crisis as
civilians are bombarded daily and areas are cut off from
receiving aid.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president of the
United States, was roundly mocked on Thursday when he appeared not to know what Aleppo was during
an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

One of the most significant things about the G20 summit was
something that didn't happen.

Hangzhou didn't become Yalta. China didn't become Munich.

But Vladimir Putin sure wanted it to.

In fact, Russia's actions in and around Ukraine over the past
month appear to have been, at least in part, a big psy-op in the
run-up to the summit.

Russian
President Vladimir Putin sits before the start of the opening
ceremony of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou.

Moscow ginned up a fake crisis in Crimea in August, accusing
Ukraine of sending a team of agent saboteurs to the annexed
peninsula to carry out terrorist acts.
Feigning outrage, the Kremlin then abruptly pulled out of planned
four-party talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois
Hollande.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Soviet-era documents show that Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas worked in the 1980s for the KGB, the
now-defunct intelligence agency where Russian leader Vladimir
Putin once served, Israeli researchers said on Thursday.

The Palestinian government denied that Abbas, who received a PhD
in Moscow in 1982, had been a Soviet spy, and it accused Israel
of "waging a smear campaign" aimed at derailing efforts to revive
peace negotiations that collapsed in 2014.

NATO and Russia are in a missile race, and Poland may have just
raised the stakes.
The Polish government announced Tuesday that it would buy the
U.S. Army’s Patriot air-and-missile defense system, a move widely
seen as a response to Moscow’s upcoming deployment of
nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.

A
US Patriot missile system

Five other NATO countries already deploy the Patriot system
— which can knock down missiles, drones, and small aircraft — but
none are as far to the east as Poland, nor so close to
Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave which is already bristling with
missile systems and other advanced Russian military hardware.